Consistently Inconsistent

I’ve often been called eccentric, unconventional or, more cheerfully, bonkers.

I don’t mind bonkers. In fact, I always take it as a bit of a compliment. It sounds far more interesting than sensible, and sensible is the sort of word that makes my shoulders inch towards my ears.

But I’ve recently realised something.

People sometimes think I’m inconsistent because I don’t automatically follow trends, conventional wisdom, or whatever the current accepted thing is. I’ll like one book by an author, not the next three. I’ll read something marketed as serious and find it funny. I’ll read something marketed as hilarious and sit there stony-faced, wondering whether I’ve accidentally bought the wrong book.

I don’t really think in neat boxes and never have.

This is unfortunate because the modern world often seems very fond of boxes. Books must go into categories. Authors must choose genres. Marketing must go through funnels. I should guide my readers towards the correct entry point, as if they’ve arrived in London without an A-Z. I gave my age away there!

And I’m sitting there thinking, ‘How do I know where someone else should start?’

That, I think, is one of my core problems with certain marketing advice. It assumes a level of certainty I simply don’t possess.

I know what feels right to me. I don’t know what feels right for another person.

That isn’t false modesty. It’s just the truth. I am the world's expert on being me, which is quite enough responsibility for one lifetime. I am not the world's expert on being anyone else.

Therefore, I find some advice so difficult. ‘Tell readers to start here.’ But how do I know? One reader might love the book with the oddest premise. Another might prefer the one I nearly didn’t mention. One might like the humour. Another might like the emotional thread underneath. Another might want the talking cat (or one of them!)

Readers have to taste the tea for themselves.

I used to teach meditation, and people would sometimes ask me what it would do for them. I could try to explain, but it always felt inadequate. It was like trying to explain the taste of tea to someone who had never had a sip. I could talk about warmth, tannin, comfort, and whether one has put in far too much milk (I prefer it black!), but the quickest way to know what tea tastes like is to drink it.

I feel the same about books.

I can tell you what ingredients are in mine. Wit. Women who have had quite enough. A bit of rebellion. Sometimes magic, sometimes time travel, sometimes a cat who has no intention of behaving like an ordinary cat. Sometimes all four.

But I can’t tell you what the book will taste like to you.

You might love it, you might find it ‘meh’, you might hate it.

This is probably why I currently have a free starter library here on my website. Some marketing experts might say I give away too much. Perhaps I do. But it feels right to me. It lets readers browse, sample and decide for themselves without me standing over them with a clipboard saying, ‘You should begin with this one.’

Nothing makes me want to lie down in a darkened room faster than a clipboard. Well, apart from spreadsheets. Kill me now.

The same pattern has cropped up in other areas of my life, too.

I don’t like being managed or choreographed. I don’t mean ordinary structure. I can cope perfectly well with lunch between one and two and dinner at half past seven. I mean the sort of managing where someone else starts directing the small movements of your life.

Walk here. Cross there. Read this. Do that. Join in. Use this knife to butter the bread. Don’t be awkward.

The moment someone choreographs me, my body stiffens.

It’s not rebellion, more that I lose the natural flow of being myself. When I’m left alone, I make perfectly good decisions. I cross roads, choose books, write chapters, make tea and occasionally buy a jumper without bringing civilisation to its knees.

But when someone tells me how to do things I already know how to do, I become self-conscious and the flow breaks. I am no longer simply living. I am being observed, corrected, or improved.

Improved is a dreadful word when applied to another adult.

Therefore, intuition matters to me – a lot.

Intuition is almost impossible to explain to someone who has not experienced it deeply. It doesn’t arrive carrying a spreadsheet. It doesn’t present a pie chart. It often comes as a feeling, a bodily knowing, a quiet sense that something is right or wrong long before the conscious mind can explain why. In fact, my conscious mind can rarely explain why. Perhaps never.

This makes intuitive people vulnerable to certainty.

Someone else can arrive with arguments, projections, charts and utter confidence. Meanwhile, the intuitive person is standing there saying, ‘Something about this doesn’t feel right,’ which sounds feeble by comparison.

But feeble is not the same as wrong.

Some of the biggest mistakes I’ve made have happened because I ignored my own signals in favour of someone else’s certainty. Not because they meant harm. Often they meant well. But certainty is seductive, especially when your own knowing has not yet found words.

Someone else’s confidence is not proof that they know what is right for me.

That may be the thread running through all of this.

I don’t want to control other people. Truly, I can think of few things less appealing. I don’t want to tell them what to read, think, enjoy or believe. I don’t want to win arguments. I don’t even particularly want to be agreed with.

I just want the same courtesy back.

I want to be allowed to know and do what feels right for me.

That sounds simple, but it took me a while to realise how important it is. I've often extended more respect to other people’s experience than to my own. If I sense someone’s ego is fragile, I may make myself smaller so they can feel more comfortable. If someone is very certain, I may start doubting my own quieter knowing.

This is not ideal. I’m working on it. Slowly. With tea. Lots of tea. 

The phrase that has stayed with me is this:

‘Remain the author of your own experience.’

That stopped me in my tracks, because perhaps that is what I've been trying to do all along.

Perhaps I've been looking for consistency in the wrong place.

Maybe the consistency was never in the categories. Maybe it was never in following trends, repeating opinions or fitting neatly under the correct umbrella.

Maybe the consistency was underneath.

Trust direct experience.

Let people find their own way.

Don’t assume you know another person’s inner life.

Pay attention to intuition.

Don’t surrender your own knowingness simply because someone else sounds certain.

Remain the author of your own experience.

Perhaps what looked like eccentricity from the outside was actually a consistent inner compass that other people simply could not see.

Or perhaps I am just bonkers.

Either way, I’ll take it